Shine

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “What’s up with you and Mickey?” I asked her when we met at the bar for a soda refill.

  “We’re friends.” She gave a serene sigh and a little laugh. “Wow, I didn’t think that word could ever not hurt when applied to us.”

  I hugged her hard. “As long as you’re happy.”

  “We are.” Her arms tightened. “Holy crap. Look!”

  Connor and Siobhan were kissing in a corner booth, their bodies melded together as they ended their six-week breakup—or at least interrupted it.

  “I didn’t think that’d last,” said a voice behind us. We turned to see Dylan, who looked down at Megan. “Wanna dance?” he asked her in a flat tone, like he didn’t care.

  She scrunched up her face. “Um, you hate me.”

  “Yeah, come on.” He took her hand and led her away.

  I watched, amazed, as their begrudging affection slowly emerged from under their armor of bickering.

  Then I raised my glass to the final photo taken of Logan during his life, poster-size on the wall. He stood in the center of the stage, his blue eyes turned to the lights above, one hand holding the mic to his lips and the other reaching out to the crowd. Out to the world that loved him.

  I wondered what Logan had seen in that moment. A future as a rock star? A future with me? Or just a blinding white spotlight obliterating every thought? I wished I’d asked him.

  Logan could no longer fill in those blanks. From now on, we’d have to imagine what he would say if he were here. And imagine how he felt, wherever he was. There was no way to know for sure.

  But I thought of ex-Latisha’s face as she’d glowed, then faded on Lawyers’ Mall. The memory of her smile—and Logan’s, too—told me the only answer that still mattered: They were happy.

  Megan and I were in AP Chemistry one day early in December when the ax finally fell on our lives.

  Mrs. Oswald had just told us we had to cover two sections per class between now and midterms or risk not having studied everything we needed for the Advanced Placement test. We were all trying to keep our grumbles to a sub-riot level when a crackle and whine came over the PA.

  “Everyone,” Principal Hirsch said. “May I please have your immediate attention.”

  My heart rate quickened from the tone of his voice and the timing. Routine announcements always came during homeroom. I glanced across the room at Simon, who looked as perplexed as everyone else. Then again, he could be faking confusion.

  The principal continued, “There will be an emergency assembly in the auditorium immediately. All students, staff, and faculty are required to attend. No exceptions.”

  The entire student body—seven hundred people, more or less—filed into the auditorium by grade.

  “Feels weird to finally sit in the front,” I told Megan as we took our seats. I saw Simon at the end of our row, as usual keeping me in sight without looking like he was keeping me in sight.

  Principal Hirsch stood at the podium, appearing unusually somber. I wondered if someone had died.

  “Silence, please.” Our principal’s voice was so serious, people actually listened. Something was very wrong. “This morning, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Defense of the Living Act.”

  “Oh no,” I whispered. The girl on my left gave me a quizzical look.

  “The Senate is expected to pass its version later this week, and the president has vowed to sign the law.” Principal Hirsch took off his glasses. “Henceforth, all post-Shifters, upon turning eighteen, will be required to register for selective service to the Department of Metaphysical Purity. In other words, a DMP draft.”

  The auditorium erupted in cries of confusion and protest. “This is bullshit!” some guy in the junior class behind me shouted. “Yeah, bullshit!” someone echoed from the sophomore section.

  The crowd took up the chant: “Bull-SHIT! Bull-SHIT! Bull-SHIT!”

  I didn’t join in. My throat had closed up so that I could barely breathe. The DMP had always wanted to use us, had tried so hard to recruit us, and now we had no choice.

  Principal Hirsch folded his glasses and put them in his sport-coat pocket. He made no attempt to quiet the chants, but let them die down on their own.

  “I sympathize,” he said, clearing his throat. “I myself had to face a very different kind of draft during the Vietnam War.”

  “When does it start?” asked Amy Koeller.

  “Once the bill has been signed, the DMP is expected to move quickly to put the system into place. They cite the need to protect the public.” Principal Hirsch’s tone oozed skepticism. “It will begin with the first post-Shifters, those born December twenty-first at three fifty a.m. and later.”

  In other words, with me.

  “What about college?” Megan asked without raising her hand.

  “You can file for a deferment, which they may or may not approve. But the moment you graduate from university or stop attending full-time, your name will go back into the lottery. You may also sign up voluntarily, which will presumably give you a better position with higher pay. Either way, by your eighteenth birthday, you must register.”

  I sat there, steaming. I’d done everything I could to hurt the DMP, but it wasn’t enough. They were using Flight 346 to make the public, and therefore politicians, so scared of ghosts that they’d take the freedoms of post-Shifters.

  “For some of you, it will no doubt be an adventure,” Principal Hirsch said. “If you can pretend you have a choice.”

  Megan nudged me. “Won’t you be in Ireland on your eighteenth birthday?”

  “I guess I’ll have to register before I go.”

  Or not register, and never come home again. I felt Simon’s eyes. What did MI-X plan for me now?

  A murmur started in the back of the auditorium. Megan and I turned to see several male DMP agents in white uniforms taking up stations near the exits. Two more flanked a blond woman in a suit, striding down the aisle toward the stage. I recognized her as one of the recruiters who’d visited our school last year.

  The two agents mounted the stage and moved to stand by Principal Hirsch. As he sputtered a protest, they led him away from the podium. The blonde took his place and addressed us.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “forgive the interruption. The DMP hoped to introduce its new policy directly to post-Shifters, without the filter of pre-Shifter experience.”

  “Like she’s not a pre-Shifter herself,” Megan growled.

  I tapped her arm. “I bet Hirsch called the emergency assembly because he knew the DMP was coming.”

  The two dumpers led our principal offstage and toward the back of the auditorium. He began to struggle in their grip. “This is an outrage. This is my school!”

  I looked to the side of the auditorium, where some of the teachers were conferring. Why weren’t they stepping forward to stop this? Was every pre-Shifter now crazy enough to believe the DMP knew best?

  I stood up. “Where are they taking him?” I shouted at the woman in the suit.

  “Everyone calm down,” she said. “Or we’ll be forced to take harsher measures.”

  Three huge sophomore guys got up and stood in the aisle in front of Principal Hirsch and the dumpers. I recognized the boys from last year—they’d been recruited with lacrosse scholarships. They were intimidating even without sticks in their hands.

  “Stand back, kids,” said the one of the agents who held Principal Hirsch.

  Calling us “kids”? The fastest way to get on our bad side. In response, the giant sophomores widened their stances, blocking the aisle.

  I hurried up after the agents, Megan on my heels. “Do you have a warrant for Principal Hirsch’s arrest?” I asked them.

  The lead agent laughed at me. “Why do you think we need a warrant?”

  “We’re not stupid,” our goalkeeper said. “We watch police shows.”

  “My aunt’s a lawyer.” I gestured to the auditorium. “Half of us here have lawyers for parents. And thanks to our American
-history teachers, we know our rights.” It couldn’t hurt to suck up to the faculty—maybe it would get them to actually do something besides fret.

  “They don’t need a warrant, Aura.” Principal Hirsch jerked his elbows out of their grip. “Because I’m not under arrest. Isn’t that right, sirs?”

  The lead agent grimaced. “Of course. We just want to question him.”

  “What’s he done wrong?” I asked them.

  The recruiter woman tapped the microphone. “We requested that your school administration allow us to announce the legislation directly and simultaneously to every student body, so that we might put it in the proper context.”

  So they could “control the message,” as Nicola would say. “Principal Hirsch ignored a ‘request.’ He didn’t break a law.”

  “Free speech!” someone in the middle of the auditorium shouted.

  I pointed to the recruiter. “Yeah, ever heard of the First Amendment? Or does your stupid law repeal that, too?” The woman’s lips tightened, and my chest went cold. “It does?”

  “Of course it doesn’t repeal it,” she said, as if talking to a five-year-old. “But it does make provisions regarding public criticism of the selective service program. For security purposes.”

  “That’s unconstitutional!”

  She shrugged. “The courts will decide. In the meantime, people need to watch what they say.”

  If I could’ve shot lasers from my eyes, the woman’s pretty face would’ve had two burning holes in it. I looked at our principal. Did he want us to rise up and defend him? Or sit down and take it, plan to fight another day?

  But what if there wasn’t another day? What if they locked him up and replaced him, and we never saw him again? What if we were next?

  “We won’t let you take him,” I said, hoping I was right, that it wouldn’t be just me and three sophomores against half a dozen armed federal agents.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” the lead dumper snarled.

  With a shuffle of book bags and creak of fold-down seats, the student body rose as one. A moment later, the faculty joined them, moving to block the exits.

  The freshman students left the rows first, filing between the agents at the door and the agents who had Principal Hirsch. Then came the sophomores, then the juniors, and finally the seniors.

  Jenna and Christopher joined Megan at my side. Even my old enemy Brian Knox stood by me.

  We didn’t shake our fists or wave so much as pencils at them. Our numbers and our rightness were enough.

  Finally I said, “That’s we.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  That night I told Zachary about the assembly and the DMP’s attempt to detain our principal. In the face of the student and faculty solidarity—and our threat to call in our lawyer parents—they’d abandoned their efforts, giving Hirsch an official warning. Which probably meant they’d had no legal basis to detain him in the first place.

  “That’s pure bollocks.” Zachary looked as if he’d like to punch a few dumpers himself. “What’ll you do now?”

  “I’ll register before my birthday. If I don’t, they’ll think I’m dodging and stop me in the airport on my way to see you.”

  “We definitely don’t want that.”

  “I know. But it’s so scary, feeling like we can’t speak out.”

  His face hardened. “You’ve no idea.” Then he looked away and rubbed the back of his neck, which his hair was beginning to cover again. The memory of its end-of-summer shagginess, combined with his present troubled demeanor, made me want to hug him and beg him to finally tell me what the DMP had done.

  “Let’s switch to unencrypted now,” he said. “We’ll start over and discuss all our lovely false plans.”

  I nodded, hiding my disappointment. We logged off, then back on with the signal unscrambled. At least I never had to pretend to be happy to see him.

  After we chatted aimlessly for a few minutes, Zachary said, “Just two more weeks until you come to Glasgow. It’s all arranged—the rental car, our ferry to Orkney, the bed and breakfast. I’ve even made birthday dinner reservations.”

  “Where?”

  Zachary hesitated. He hadn’t invented that part yet. “It’s a surprise.”

  I struggled to keep my smile from turning into a laugh. It was fun pretending I was going to Scotland instead of meeting him in Ireland. For extra serendipity, there was a megalith similar to Newgrange in Scotland’s Orkney Islands, called Maeshowe. Its inner chamber marked the winter solstice sunset instead of sunrise. So there was a plausible reason why we’d be going there.

  Just to be sure the DMP believed our conversation, I turned it to a personal subject—one I needed to discuss, anyway.

  “Zach, I have a slight packing issue. What do you like girls to, you know, wear?”

  He angled his head, clearly confused. “Whatever they want.”

  “I mean”—my face heated—“in bed.”

  “Oh!” He blinked rapidly, probably imagining government guys in bad suits listening in. “Dunno. Never spent the night with anyone.”

  At least our nervousness wasn’t being faked. “But what do you think is attractive?”

  He paused. “Nakedness?”

  “Besides that! You must have some preference.”

  “Are you getting this from a magazine?”

  “Of course not.” I pushed the latest issue of Cosmo farther back on my desk.

  “Because honestly, I don’t care.” Fully himself again, he held out his hands, palms together. “I promise, it willnae matter what you wear. I willnae see it. I want you now, and I’ll want you then, more than anyone ever wanted anyone.”

  I waited, unsatisfied.

  “You need an answer, don’t you?” he said.

  I nodded.

  He glanced away, then back again. “I like red.”

  I grinned. I looked hot in red.

  “Listen,” he said. “Don’t think I expect us to—just because we have a room together doesn’t mean we need to—”

  “Yes, we do.” Forgetting the rest of the world, I reached out to the screen to touch his lips. “I need to. With you.”

  “Oh.” His eyelids went heavy. “Me too.”

  My pulse pounded with a sudden craving. “I wish you were here right now.”

  Zachary’s eyelashes flashed as he leaned in. “I am there now.” He lifted his hand to a spot below the camera. “Guess where I’m touching you.”

  I gave him a wicked smile. “Here?” I fingered the top button of my green silk pajama shirt.

  He clicked his tongue. “What do you take me for, lass? I’ll no’ be groping you long-distance. Guess again.”

  I swept my hand over my neck. “Here?”

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  It was true—literally. I hoped he couldn’t see me sweat at the thought of his hands on me. I touched my cheek. “Here?”

  “A bit warmer.”

  I smushed the tip of my nose. “Here.”

  “Boiling hot.”

  I let my fingers drift down an inch, brushing my parted lips. “Here?”

  “Aye.” He pressed his fingers to his own lips, then reached for the camera. I did the same, and for a moment, our virtual touch-kiss blotted out our views of each other.

  Then he whispered, “You’d best let me sleep now. Not that I’ll be able to.” For once I thought he meant for a good reason.

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  He nodded once. “And then ‘good night’ won’t be just another word for ‘good-bye.’ ”

  Monday morning I found a note slipped into my locker, in Simon’s handwriting:

  Early Christmas gifts for you. Backstage after school.

  The drama class had just done five performances of Antigone (a holiday classic!) and was taking the day off before this week’s shows. I found Simon sitting on Creon’s throne, legs crossed and arms resting on the sides in a lordly posture.

  “You look a little too comfortable there.” I glanc
ed at the closed curtain, which blocked us from the auditorium.

  “You and Zachary have done well. Our source tells us the DMP thinks you’re meeting in Scotland.”

  “Thanks for buying me the extra fake ticket. Must’ve been expensive.”

  “That’s not all we’ve done.” Simon pulled his backpack onto his lap and withdrew a large manila envelope. “We want you and your boyfriend to make it to Ireland and back safely. To that end, once you board your respective international flights—from Atlanta, in your case—Aura Salvatore and Zachary Moore will disappear.”

  I opened the envelope. Inside was a stack of papers and what looked like a brick-red UK passport.

  Simon continued, “We’ve arranged it so that your plane tickets, your rental car, and your bed-and-breakfast are now under the names Laura and John MacLean. John goes by Jack, by the way. It rhymes with Zach, so if you make a mistake, people might think they’ve misheard.”

  The passport showed my photo beside LAURA REESE MACLEAN. “Are we supposed to be brother and sister?”

  “No.” Simon opened his other hand to reveal a small, blue, velvet jewelry box. He popped it open with his thumb. “More like husband and wife.”

  Inside was a gold wedding band, sitting next to a pear-cut diamond engagement ring. “Whoa.”

  “Forgive me for not getting down on one knee to present them.” He held the box out to me. “Go on, see if they fit. We can have them adjusted before you leave if necessary.”

  The rings fit perfectly. I quickly removed them and stuffed them back in the box.

  Simon zipped up his backpack. “Put them on when you board in Atlanta. MI-X can protect you in the United States. We can protect you in the United Kingdom.” He met my gaze. “We cannot protect you in Ireland.”

  “Why not?”

  “We have no agreement with Irish authorities to conduct covert operations within the boundaries of the Republic. In fact, we’re expressly forbidden, as is the DMP.” His mouth twisted. “The Irish love their ghosts.”